Shearer: 'Machete' does what 'Grindhouse' couldn't

Last month, in my review of Edgar Wright's latest film, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," I touched on the subject of movie geeks making movies for fellow movie geeks.

While I certainly appreciate where they're coming from, I never will understand the thought process behind trying to bring niche entertainment to a mass audience. 2007's "Grindhouse," a three-hour monster tribute to exploitation and cult film, was a dream come true for me. But it came as no surprise when the film tanked at the box office, failing to attract the kind of crowds that lead to financial success. Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, known for their respective violent cinematic efforts, went all-out in their attempt to show moviegoers why genre entertainment from the '70s and early '80s was so much fun. Still, in the end, the only people the film seemed to resonate with were those who already knew and loved the kind of movies that influenced it.

Part of the "Grindhouse" concept included trailers for films that didn't actually exist. These played before and in between Tarantino's and Rodriguez's segments of the picture, and were highly entertaining blasts of ridiculous action and freakish imagery. Of these fake advertisements, the one for "Machete" stood out of the pack. Starring veteran tough guy character actor Danny Trejo and featuring Cheech Marin as a shotgun-toting priest, the trailer played like a Rodriguez film on fast-forward, as if someone took the most hyper-kinetic sequences from his "El Mariachi," "Desperado" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" flicks, duct-taped them together and ran them through an old, beaten-up projector. It was one of the things that managed to stay in people's minds, even those who chose to stay home when "Grindhouse" made its brief theatrical run. Rodriguez knew this, too, and made immediate plans to turn "Machete" into its own complete movie.

The thing about trailers for most exploitation-era films is, what you saw in those compressed versions usually added up to the only interesting parts of the movies. Squeezing every penny out of their ultra-low budgets, the producers tried to draw attention to any sellable elements they had - car crashes, violence, nudity - to get people to go see their product. True to form, when "Machete" was expanded to full length, the trailers pulled out all the stops, adding a litter of celebrity faces to the proceedings. Robert DeNiro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Don Johnson and Steven Seagal (whose squinty mug hasn't graced theater screens in nearly a decade) figured heavily in the new advertising, building the movie into an almost irresistible concoction for the curious. The result was a close second place at the weekend box office to the new George Clooney flick. If you didn't quite understand what "exploitation" was or how it works, this is the best lesson I can think of. But does "Machete" work?

I lost count of how many beheadings there were in the first three minutes. The story is simple, a classic anti-hero setup to get the audience on Machete's side and wanting to see the bad guys get it (One poor soul is crushed by a low rider, and Trejo bests one opponent without ever dropping the burrito he's eating). The celebrity guests are much more than glorified cameos - DeNiro plays his ruthless, sleazeball politician with B-movie gusto right alongside Seagal (in a rare villain role that manages to combine Ricardo Montalban and Darth Vader); Lohan spends most of her screen time either completely naked or dressed as a nun; and Johnson has a bright future as a screen heavy. Watching "Machete," you get the idea everyone had a hell of a lot of fun making this type of movie, and it all works because Rodriguez delivers everything the trailers promised. This is a movie made by a fellow who knows and understands the good and bad things about the genre he's working in, and the result is one of those rare instances of truth in advertising.